Texas GOP Chair: Party was ‘forced’ to pass platform endorsing gay cure therapy
The chair of the Texas Republican party has claimed that delegates were “forced” to pass a platform endorsing gay cure therapy, due to a loophole in conference rules.
The party passed the platform earlier this month, including a clause which states: “We recognize the legitimacy and value of counselling which offers reparative therapy and treatment to patients who are seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle.
“No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to this type of therapy.”
However, Texas GOP Chair Steve Munisteri has told Texas Public Radio that most people he spoke to were opposed to the policy.
He said: “My emails and phone calls to the office from Republicans are running overwhelmingly opposed to that plank in the platform.
He said the plank endorsing the therapy, which was inserted by Tea Party activist Cathie Adams, took advantage of a loophole in conference rules to escape scrutiny.
He said: “Because the way the platform works, once somebody calls the question on the platform it’s a parliamentary manoeuvre.
“The delegates are really forced to pass the platform as is, because if you don’t there is no platform.”
He admitted there was ‘no way to tell’ what the majority of Republicans in the state thought of the platform by itself.
On his own views on the issue, he said: “I just make the point for anybody that thinks that may be the possibility: Do they think they can take a straight person to a psychiatrist and turn them gay?”
